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by sunwoo



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 02:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18540490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunwoo/pseuds/sunwoo
Summary: Donghyuck’s last wish is for Mark to walk him home.





	Home

“Mark.”

Mark looked over at Donghyuck, slowing his footsteps to match Donghyuck’s. School had just ended, and the two boys were simply walking around, looking for anything to do (and in Donghyuck’s case, looking for any trouble to get into).

“Yeah, Hyuck? Come up with anything to do in that pretty little head of yours?” Mark asked, earning a laugh from Donghyuck.

“No. This pretty little head right here doesn’t think.” Donghyuck tapped his forehead with a smile on his face. “I did remember something, though.”

“Homework you forgot to do?”

Donghyuck shook his head, his smile staying on his face even with his next words. “Huang Renjun’s gang told me to meet them in the alley by that convenience store we always go to.”

“Huang Renjun’s gang,” Mark said, his words sounding more like a statement than a question.

“Renjun saw me get answers from that really smart kid in my environmental science class and told me to give him the answers to that really big project that counts for a lot of our grade, and I told him: ‘No, over my dead body.’ Must’ve taken it seriously because yesterday his gang told me to go meet them today.”

“Donghyuck, they’ll kill you,” Mark said. He looked over at Donghyuck, who seemed unbothered by the situation. “They’ll seriously kill you.”

“Have you ever actually seen one of those guys actually kill anybody?” Donghyuck snickered.

Mark opened his mouth to say something but closed it. He simply shook his head.

“See? Nothing to worry about, Mark,” Donghyuck told him. “You can come if you’d like. You’ll worry about me too much if you don’t.”

* * *

Mark was in the middle of holding down one of the gang members—his name was Jisung, and he had kept on saying “sorry” every time he punched or kicked Mark prior to Mark pinning him against the concrete—when he heard a gunshot. His head spun around as soon as he heard Donghyuck yell.

He felt like time had stopped.

Donghyuck was falling to the ground, clutching his stomach tightly. He had been shot.

Mark let go of Jisung, who watched the following events from his unchanged position on the ground.

Mark ran over, punching the shooter—Huang Renjun—in the face as hard as he could.

Renjun fell back, but he got back up and spat a quick and furious “fuck you, Lee Donghyuck.”

Mark couldn’t do anything as he watched Renjun run away unharmed and probably very happy that Donghyuck was hurt.

The couple other gang members on Renjun’s side followed their leader, disappearing behind the corner of the convenience store.

Mark kneeled down to Donghyuck, placing his hand under his head. Donghyuck had been shot in the stomach, and if Mark knew anything about gunshots, Donghyuck didn’t have much time left; there wasn’t any hospital nearby and neither boy had their phones on them (because Mark had learned to not bring any valuable items into an alley in this town the hard way not too long ago).

Donghyuck smiled weakly at Mark. “I would’ve never thought that you had it in you to punch a guy like that.”

“I couldn’t bear seeing you hurt,” Mark whispered, his voice coming out shakily.

“Are you crying?” Donghyuck began laughing, and Mark shook his head immediately.

“No, of course not,” he told him. “How… how are you doing that? You’re smiling and laughing and making fun of me, but you’re about to—”

“Walk me home, Mark?” Donghyuck cut the boy off before he would say that Donghyuck was about to die. They both knew it, but Donghyuck didn’t want Mark to say it.

“Is… is that a question?” Mark asked.

“Will you walk me home?” Donghyuck asked again. “Don’t try to take me to a hospital. I just want to see my parents before I…”

Mark watched as Donghyuck trailed off before saying what he knew was going to happen.

“Okay,” Mark said, helping Donghyuck get up without hurting him more. “Get on my back, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck carefully got on Mark’s back, and Mark had trouble walking with a very hurt boy on his back.

Mark couldn’t tell if there were many people on the streets of their town both because his eyes were still full of tears and because he couldn’t raise his head up fully out of fear of dropping Donghyuck, but if there were people who saw them, no one did anything despite the fact Mark was carrying a boy with his stomach dripping blood on his back.

“Mark?” Donghyuck asked, once they were a couple blocks away from his house.

“Yeah?”

“Remember when we were younger, and I told you I got a new XBox?” Donghyuck asked.

“Yeah, you never let me come over and use it.” Mark grunted in discomfort from the feeling of Donghyuck slowly getting heavier on his back and the wetness of Donghyuck’s blood over his shirt and arm.

“I lied. I never had an XBox,” Donghyuck said. “I just had to get it off my chest.”

Mark’s shirt was soaking up Donghyuck’s blood, and he could feel the cold sensation on his back. He was afraid Donghyuck would bleed to death on top of him, him not being able to grant Donghyuck his wish of seeing his parents one last time.

“Since we’re sharing things,” Mark started. “I broke your mom’s vase two years ago. The red one that matched the carpet.”

Donghyuck gasped, then coughed for several seconds as his body grew weaker. “You told me you had never seen a vase in my house before!”

“Yeah, I lied,” Mark said. “It was a nice vase, by the way.”

“Yeah, I picked it, so of course it was nice,” Donghyuck responded, and Mark knew the younger boy was grinning even though he couldn’t see him. “I stole your favorite pen once.”

“The purple one with a little sticker on it? You told me I probably left it at the school library,” Mark said. Donghyuck laughed quietly with that.

Donghyuck didn’t say anything after that, and Mark gulped.

“I, um, I once told you that I liked that girl in your class a couple years ago,” Mark started, and Donghyuck hummed. “That was a lie. I didn’t like her. I actually liked… well,  _ like  _ you, Hyuck.”

“Mark, you’re telling me this while I’m bleeding out?” Donghyuck asked, and Mark was seconds away from crying.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I wanted you to know while I had the chance to,” Mark said, sniffling.

Mark wanted to ask Donghyuck if he liked him too because right now was the only chance he had to know the truth, but he instead told Donghyuck: “We’re here.”

Mark struggled walking up the stairs and up to the front door, so Donghyuck rang the doorbell for him as one of his arms let go of Mark for only a moment.

Donghyuck’s mother opened the door, gasping as soon as she saw her son.

“I’m so sorry,” Mark said, walking into the house without asking if he could come in first.

“Mom, dad, it’s nothing, really,” Donghyuck said, but everyone knew it was a lie. It was the biggest lie he had ever told, bigger than him telling Mark he had an XBox, bigger than him telling Mark he left his favorite pen at the school library. “Just got, uh… shot. That’s all.”

Mark heard Donghyuck’s father mutter something about Donghyuck always getting into trouble, and before Mark knew it, Donghyuck’s parents took the young boy into a nearby room, and Mark was awkwardly standing outside.

He couldn’t make out what Donghyuck or his parents were saying, but after a couple minutes, the talking died down and was replaced with sobbing.

Mark felt his heart shatter into a million pieces.

Mark thought of how he wanted to know if Donghyuck had feelings for him like he had for Donghyuck, he wanted to take Donghyuck on dates, he wanted to brag about Donghyuck being his, he wanted to love Donghyuck for the rest of his life, but it was all too late now.

A few moments later, Donghyuck’s parents stepped out of the room, and Mark didn’t dare glance into the room where he knew Donghyuck laid dead in.

“You should go home now, Mark.” Donghyuck’s mother and father pitifully smiled at the boy staring at them.

“Yeah, right, okay,” Mark said, but he had nowhere to go because Donghyuck was his home.


End file.
